Kitabı oku: «The Cathedrals of Southern France», sayfa 19
XXI
ST. PIERRE DE MENDE
In the heart of the Gévaudan, Mende is the most picturesque, mountain-locked little city imaginable, with no very remarkable features surrounding it, nor any very grand artificial ones contained within it.
The mountains here, unlike the more fruitful plains of the lower Gévaudan, are covered with snow all of the winter. It is said that the inhabitants of the mountainous upper Gévaudan used to "go into Spain every winter to get a livelihood." Why, it is difficult to understand. The mountain and valley towns around Mende look no less prosperous than those of Switzerland, though to be sure the inhabitants have never here had, and perhaps never will have, the influx of tourists "to live off of," as in the latter region.
During an invasion of the Alemanni into Gaul, in the third century, the principal city of Gévaudan was plundered and ruined. The bishop, St. Privat, fled into the Cavern of Memate or Mende, whither the Germans followed and killed him.
The holy man was interred in the neighbouring village of Mende, and the veneration which people had for his memory caused them to develop it into a considerable place. Such is the popular legend, at any rate.
The city had no bishop of its own, however, until the middle of the tenth century. Previously the bishops were known as Bishops of Gévaudan. At last, however, the prelates fixed their seat at Mende, and "great numbers of people resorted thither by reason of the sepulchre of St. Privat."
By virtue of an agreement with Philippe-le-Bel, in 1306, the bishop became Count of Gévaudan. He claimed also the right of administering the laws and the coining of specie.
Mende is worth visiting for itself alone and for its cathedral. It is difficult to say which will interest the absolute stranger the more.
The spired St. Pierre de Mende is but a fourteenth-century church, with restorations of the seventeenth, but there is a certain grimness and primitiveness about its fabric which would otherwise seem to place it as of a much earlier date.
The seventeenth-century restorations amounted practically to a reconstruction, as the Calvinists had partly destroyed the fabric. The two fine towers of the century before were left standing, but without their spires.
The city itself lies at a height of over seven hundred kilometres, and the pic rises another three hundred kilometres above. The surrounding "green basin of hillsides" encloses the city in a circular depression, which, with its cathedral as the hub, radiates in long, straight roadways to the bases of these verdure-clad hills.
It is not possible to have a general view of the cathedral without its imposing background of mountain or hilltops, and for this reason, while the entire city may appear dwarfed, and its cathedral likewise diminished in size, they both show in reality the strong contrasting effect of nature and art.
The cathedral towers, built by Bishop de la Rovère, are of sturdy though not great proportions, and the half-suggested spires rise skyward in as piercing a manner as if they were continued another hundred feet.
As a matter of fact one rises to a height of two hundred and three feet, and the other to two hundred and seventy-six feet, so at least, they are not diminutive. The taller of these pleasing towers is really a remarkable work.
The general plan of the cathedral is the conventional Gothic conception, which was not changed in the seventeenth-century reconstruction.
The nave is flanked with the usual aisles, which in turn are abutted with ten chapels on either side.
Just within the left portal is preserved the old bourdon called la Non-Pareille, a curiosity which seems in questionable taste for inclusion within a cathedral.
The rose window of the portal shows in the interior with considerable effect, though it is of not great elegance or magnificence of itself.
In the Chapelle des Catechismes, immediately beneath the tower, is an unusual "Assumption." As a work of art its rank is not high, and its artist is unknown, but in its conception it is unique and wonderful.
There are some excellent wood-carvings in the Chapelle du Baptistère, a description which applies as well to the stalls of the choir.
Around the sanctuary hang seven tapestries, ancient, it is said, but of no great beauty in themselves.
In a chapel on the north side of the choir is a "miraculous statue" of la Vierge Noir.
The organ buffet dates from 1640, and is of the ridiculous overpowering bulk of most works of its class.
The bishopric, founded by St. Sévérein in the third century at Civitas Gabalorum, was reëstablished at Mende in the year 1000.
The Ermitage de St. Privat, the holy shrine of the former habitation of the holy man whose name it bears, is situated a few kilometres away on the side of Mont Mimat. It is a favourite place of pilgrimage, and from the platform of the chapel is to be had a fine view of the city and its cathedral.
XXII
OTHER OLD-TIME CATHEDRALS IN AND ABOUT
THE BASIN OF THE GARONNE
Dax
At Dax, an ancient thermal station of the Romans, is a small cathedral, mainly modern, with a portal of the thirteenth century.
It was reconstructed from these thirteenth-century remains in the seventeenth century, and exhibits no marks of beauty which would have established its ranking greatness even at that time.
Dax was a bishopric in the province of Auch in the third century, but the see was suppressed in 1802.
Eauze
Eauze was an archbishopric in the third century, when St. Paterne was its first dignitary. Subsequently – in the following century – the archbishopric was transferred to Auch.
As Elusa it was an important place in the time of Cæsar, but was completely destroyed in the early part of the tenth century. Eauze, therefore, has no church edifice which ever ranked as a cathedral, but there is a fine Gothic church of the late fifteenth century which is, in every way, an architectural monument worthy of remark.
Lombez
The bishopric of Lombez, in the ancient ecclesiastical province of Toulouse, endured from 1328 (a tenth-century Benedictine abbey foundation).
Its first bishop was one Roger de Comminges, a monk who came from the monastic community of St. Bertrand de Comminges.
The see was suppressed in 1790.
St. Papoul
St. Papoul was a bishopric from 1317 until 1790. Its cathedral is in many respects a really fine work. It was an ancient abbatial church in the Romanesque style, and has an attractive cloister built after the same manner.
Rieux
Rieux is perhaps the tiniest ville of France which has ever possessed episcopal dignity. It is situated on a mere rivulet – a branch of the Arize, which itself is not much more, but which in turn goes to swell the flood of La Garonne. Its one-time cathedral is perhaps not remarkable in any way, though it has a fine fifteenth-century tower in brique. The bishopric was founded in 1370 under Guillaumé de Brutia, and was suppressed in 1790.
Lavaur
Lavaur was a bishopric, in the ecclesiastical province of Toulouse, from 1317 to 1790.
Its cathedral of brick is of the fourteenth century, with a clocher dating from 1515, and a smaller tower, embracing a jacquemart, of the sixteenth century.
In the interior is a fine sixteenth-century painting, but there are no other artistic treasures or details of note.
Oloron
Oloron was a bishopric under St. Gratus in the sixth century; it ceased its functions as the head of a diocese at the suppression of 1790.
The former cathedral of Ste. Marie is a fine Romanic-Ogivale edifice of the eleventh century, though its constructive era may be said to extend well toward the fifteenth before it reached completion. There is a remarkably beautiful Romanesque sculptured portal. The nave is doubled, as to its aisles, and is one hundred and fifty feet or more in length and one hundred and six wide, an astonishing breadth when one comes to think of it, and a dimension which is not equalled by any minor cathedral.
There are no other notable features beyond the general attractiveness of its charming environment.
The ancient évêche has a fine Romanesque tower, and the cathedral itself is reckoned, by a paternal government, as a "monument historique," and as such is cared for at public expense.
Vabres
Vabres was a bishopric which came into being as an aftergrowth of a Benedictine foundation of the ninth century, though its episcopal functions only began in 1318, and ceased with the Revolutionary suppression. It was a suffragan in the archiepiscopal diocese of Albi.
Its former cathedral, while little to be remarked to-day as a really grand church edifice, was by no means an unworthy fane. It dates from the fourteenth century, and in part is thoroughly representative of the Gothic of that era. It was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and a fine clocher added.
St. Lizier or Couserans
The present-day St. Lizier – a tiny Pyrenean city – was the former Gallo-Romain city of Couserans. It retained this name when it was first made a bishopric by St. Valère in the fifth century. The see was suppressed in 1790.
The Église de St. Lizier, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, consists of a choir and a nave, but no aisles. It shows some traces of fine Roman sculpture, and a mere suggestion of a cloister.
The former bishop's palace dates only from the seventeenth century.
Sarlat
A Benedictine abbey was founded here in the eighth century, and from this grew up the bishopric which took form in 1317 under Raimond de Roquecarne, which in due course was finally abolished and the town stripped of its episcopal rank.
The former cathedral dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and in part from the fifteenth. Connected therewith is a sepulchral chapel, called the tour des Maures. It is of two étages, and dates from the twelfth century.
St. Pons de Tomiers
St. Pons is the seat of an ancient bishopric now suppressed. It is a charming village – it can hardly be named more ambitiously – situated at the source of the river Jaur, which rises in the Montagnes Noir in Lower Languedoc.
Its former cathedral is not of great interest as an architectural type, though it dates from the twelfth century.
The façade is of the eighteenth century, but one of its side chapels dates from the fourteenth.
St. Maurice de Mirepoix
Mirepoix is a charming little city of the slopes of the Pyrenees.
Its ancient cathedral of St. Maurice dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and has no very splendid features or appointments, – not even of the Renaissance order, – as might be expected from its magnitude. Its sole possession of note is the clocher, which rises to an approximate height of two hundred feet.
The bishopric was founded in 1318 by Raimond Athone, but was suppressed in 1790.
